Monday, March 31, 2008

April 1, 2008 - Coming Right Up

Happy April Fool's Day one and all. God, I can hardly believe that it was 35 years ago today that I reported for duty to the C.I.A. offices at Key Building in Roslyn, Virginia. And it was not until last year that I discovered the building (and the bridge I crossed every day to go to work for one whole month, until I was asked to leave for being subversive (my crime being I blew town to go see the New Riders of the Purple Sage at Temple University in Philadelphia, PA, one weekend, without telling the agency) ) were both named after Francis Scott Key. God, I was blissfully clueless back then (those who know me best say that has not changed). And yes, I really did work for the Central Intelligence Agency for one whole month. My employment there was significantly shorter than the background check they ran on me before they made me an offer I could have refused but chose not to (boy, I was going to show those New Riders something, they'd miss me when I left town). And once again, this is no April Fool's joke! The fact that I started working for the Agency on April 1, now THAT was significant in so many ways (this was during the Watergate investigations, we had Nixon in office, and yet *I* was not to be trusted - hmmmm).

Now that I have that little tidbit of personal history out in the open, I can move on to more important things. Not only is April 1 the day of fools, it is a date which also signifies the beginning of International Poetry Month. In honor of that, Jack Hirschman will be reading from his new book, All That's Left, at the San Francisco Public Library, main branch, Koret Auditorium, this evening. Additional details have been posted elsewhere on this blog.

Moving right along, Jack will also read on April 15 at Moe's Books in Berkeley while concurrently, at the North Beach Branch of the SF Public Library, poet Mark Schwartz will be reading in honor of tax day. Since taxes are a sensitive subject with me, I will go to Moe's. Sorry, Mark.